The menageries : quadrupeds, described and drawn from living subjects.

Date:
1831
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The menageries : quadrupeds, described and drawn from living subjects. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    62/412 (page 52)
    them as a passage for water, such as the whale, that makes them operate as a jet-d’eau. The sense of smell in the elephant, according to this great com- parative anatomist, is confined to that part of the nostrils which is enclosed in the bones of the head. The muscles of the trunk give to these two canals, which we have described, whatever inflexions the animal desires. Although these muscles are of an extraordinary number, they may be reduced to two principal classes—those which form the body or the interior part of the trunk, and those which encompass it. These latter are all, more or less, longitudinal— that is, they begin at the circumference of the base of the trunk, and are prolonged, more or less directly, towards its point. The other class of muscles are all transverse ; and cut the axis of the trunk in vari- ous directions. It may assist this description, to append a copy of the sections of the trunk given by Cuvier*. The longitudinal muscles are divided into anterior, posterior, and lateral. The first, which are affixed to the frontal bone, form an innumerable multitude of bundles, which all descend parallel to each other, and which are alternately contracted by tendinous intersections placed at short intervals. The second, originating in the intermaxillary bones, form two beds,divided one from the other into a great number of little bundles, whose direction is oblique. The lateral muscles form two pair, which are in some degree analogous to the muscle of the upper lip. The use of these different longitudinal muscles is sufficiently evident. When they are moved altogether, the whole of the trunk is shortened. When those on one side only are moved, the trunk is bent on that side. But further, the division of these muscles, and the tendinous intersections of the anterior class, * Anat. Comp. vol. v. pl.xxix.